Let’s face it. Consumers want real-time personalization because they crave relevance, above all. And marketers need it — because it leads to bottom line profits.
The current situation? According to April, 2015 polling by Researchscape for Evergage, found that 58 percent of global marketers now employ real-time personalization. That’s defined as data-driven personalization completed in less than one second.
Those not on the bandwagon intend to jump on soon. Among the 42 percent not using it, nearly eight in 10 intended to do so within the next year, says eMarketer.
While websites constitute the main channel for real-time personalization (44 percent), 17 percent use mobile websites, 13 percent operate via web apps, and about 9 percent use mobile apps.
“In a March 2015 Wayin study, 57 percent of U.S. marketers included personalizing digital content based on interactions in their real-time marketing,” notes eMarketer. “Evergage took a look at what content marketers personalized and found that pop-ups and inline content were the most-used types of web messages and content used for real-time personalization. Information bars on the top or bottom of a page as well as callouts pointing to various page content were each cited by more than four in 10, while inline edits and survey questions were used by around a quarter each.”
Marketers are currently most likely to segment visitors and users for real-time personalization purposes based on the types of content they viewed (48 percent), location (45 percent), time on site (36 percent) and navigation behavior (35 percent).
About 33 percent of consumers are segmented based on device, demographic data, or buyer persona.
There’s still work ahead. Research in late 2014 by Econsultancy showed that many marketers are handicapped by an inability to handle data collection from websites. Only 18 percent of client-side marketers worldwide said their ability to collect data about individual website visitors was strong.
It’s time for marketers to up their games.
“Evergage found that real-time personalization had big payoffs across the board, and the biggest involved customers,” concludes eMarketer. “Nearly three-quarters cited increased visitor engagement as a main benefit from real-time personalization, and 54 percent also said it improved the customer experience. On the dollar side, users reported increased conversion rates, lead generation, and ecommerce revenues.”